


The Escapists

by Ione



Category: 19th Century CE RPF
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-23
Updated: 2011-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-27 22:54:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ione/pseuds/Ione
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the end of June, 1845, Emily and Anne get their respective wishes: one to visit her beloved York Minster, and the other an uninterrupted two days of story play, while a desperate Charlotte does something her sisters might consider unforgivable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Escapists

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



Two young women climbed down from the shabby pony-trap at the new Keighley station, each clutching her equally shabby travel-case. They joined the throng purchasing travel tickets, the taller one murmuring to the short one, “ _Now_ we are safely away, and we can do what we like.”

 _Safely away from Charlotte_ , the shorter one thought in sorrow, but said nothing until it was time to buy tickets. Though she was the younger, she handled the exchange as her taller sister stood behind, gaze bent downward.

A short time later, the two climbed aboard the train, one looking around with an air of furtive pleasure. They were now princesses, escaping the wicked young commander of the enemy. Any of those young men walking about might be a Republican soldier in pursuit.

The tall one shivered, reveling in her secret identity. “Anyone who looks upon us will take us for shop girls, or vicarage daughters,” she murmured. “But only we know the truth. So, my dear Catherine. We must first take care to obscure the pure accent we have learnt at the Palaces of Instruction.” At the glance her companion gave her, she whispered, “Do you not wish to be Catherine? You may be Cordelia, if you desire.”

“Cordelia is yours, Emily,” was the return whisper.

The quick scowl at the word ‘Emily’ inspired a deep blush, and an even softer whisper: “It is just that I fear someone overhearing us.”

“No one is in this compartment to hear us, Anne. No, Cordelia. Or Catherine? Which is your preference? You shall choose.”

Anne gazed up into her sister’s face. Emily was so happy. It was the first time Anne remembered seeing her sister smile outside of their home. She understood that Emily was beginning the game right away, not later, when they were in private, once they reached York and had secured a room in a respectable hostel.

How strange this was. Emily was ordinarily so very shy, and she hated the outside world.

But Anne had promised that they would play at Gondal, which was Emily’s great joy, as Anne wished to show Emily her own great joy: York Minster. So she whispered back, “I am Cordelia.” She glanced outside the smudged glass in the compartment window. “Do you see any horrid Republicans?”

Emily’s spine straightened, and Anne knew that she was now a princess, in hiding, chased by the handsome but wicked Henry Angora and his men.

“They will do anything to get us back, Catherine,” Emily whispered. “We must be strong.” And, perhaps emboldened by her imaginary identity as a royal princess being pursued by evil henchmen, Emily scanned the crowd of individuals seeking a place on the train while struggling with umbrellas and a rising wind.

Anne settled her bag closely by her feet, lest someone snatch it away. Perhaps it was a failure of imagination, that she could more easily imagine some sneakthief snatching her belongings than she could a Republican spy bent on searching the train to recapture two escaping princesses.

On Charlotte’s advice they had chosen opposite benches, each near the window. Anne raised her gaze to her sister, to discover Emily’s attention caught by someone beyond the finger-smudged window. Old man with a red nose—a servant leading two children, one bawling—a handsome young man folding his umbrella as he studied the compartments. His clothing was ordinary, but he had an air, and his wide eyes were very green in this light. Anne suspected he was Irish, as there were many newly arrived in Keighley.

His lips parted in a quick smile—Emily recoiled, turning her head. Anne quickly looked away before the young man could meet her eyes as well. How horrid, to be caught staring!

Anne held her breath as the press of people pushed the young man away. She hated the thought that he might have caught her staring—he might form the wrong idea about them. She twitched the frame of her bonnet forward, blinkering the window from her view.

The train whistle screeched, a jerk, and the train began to move.

Emily relaxed, letting her breath trickle out. The villain had vanished. She and Catherine were safely on their way to the Royalists . . . now she could safely spin those fascinating green eyes into Henry, for did he not have eyes of brilliant emerald?

Anne shifted to the bench next to her sister. They had succeeded in securing a compartment all to themselves! Charlotte had been right: if you sat directly by the window, people outside would assume the compartment full. Or those who preferred the portion of the bench beside the window would pass by, seeking an empty space.

“It was he,” Emily whispered. “Henry Angora.”

As the train jolted and swayed, Emily murmured in her story-voice, “ . . . _and at the last moment, Henry raised his eyes. Their glances met. The princess had escaped his clutches after all. As the train inexorably pulled away, his eyes flashed fire, and he whirled about to order his troops to the road. They would attempt to race the train, and recapture the princess_ . . . where are we to stop first?”

“Bingley, I think. Or maybe there is one before. I forget,” Anne said, and because Emily had gone out of her story-voice, she added, “What does that really mean, his eyes flashed fire?”

“What?” Emily asked, then sighed. “You know it is figurative language. ‘ _Their gestures nimble, dark_ _eyes_ _flashing_ _free’_ —”

“Yes, and ‘ _If I said fire flashed from Gulbeyas’s eyes/ ‘twere nothing—for her eyes flashed always fire,_ ’ in ‘Don Juan’ but I want to know, if you read the words, do you imagine twin gouts of flame poured forth? Or if it is merely figurative, does the expression lose force, and become trite?”

Emily grinned. “Eyes that flash real fire—that is a demonic image. What a capital idea!”

“They must have eyelashes of iron, then. And perhaps they drink oil,” Anne ventured.

Emily considered that, then said slowly, “Why is I that I am interested in what demons do, yet I’ve scant interest in what they eat?” And she went back to the story, spinning out a long conjecture about Henry Angora’s mad pursuit of Princesses Charlotte and Cordelia.

Some of this Anne had already heard. As the train wiggled and rumbled its way through the countryside, Anne gazed out at the blurring farmland. They chugged past copses of trees dressed in summer green, the wildflowers sometimes obscured by drifts of smoke. Anne tried to see the familiar countryside as part of Gondal, the way Emily was seeing it. That farmhouse, it belonged to the Secret Society. The hazy hills just visible under the gray counterpane of this summer storm—beyond them lay Garldin.

Anne did her best to people the landscape with the stories she knew so well—to lay belief over the real—the way Emily could, but she was aware of her efforts as artificial. It felt like those dreams when she had to run, but the harder she tried, the slower her feet moved, as if they were stuck in invisible muck.

Belief had existed safe in their room, free and light as the air they breathed. She had never had to think about it, when she was young. Sadness compounded the sense of loss. It would be so _unfair_ if Thorp Green had ruined Gondal, too.

She’d found it difficult to pick up the threads that she’d laid down at Christmastide. She suspected that Emily attributed Anne’s reluctance to Charlotte’s return to Haworth, though Anne had done her best to dissuade her from that idea. She could see how ineffectual her efforts were, yet she would not—could not—tell her family the true reason for resigning a very good post.

She turned her attention to Emily, who was now whispering the heated exchange between Cordelian and Henry, as he raced his chariot and six directly next to the train compartment where the princesses leaned out of the window, their disheveled locks streaming loose in the wind . . .

Anne fell into a reverie about those long locks, and how horrid it would be to comb them out. Memory _would_ obtrude itself: the Ingham girl, her hair tangled and dirty, her angry shrieks louder than the train whistle if Anne even touched her head.

“Catherine? You say nothing,” Emily-in-Cordelia’s-voice jolted Anne.

She would not destroy her sister’s pleasure. She called up and repeated some of the words she’d written the last time one of her princesses had been captured by a handsome villain. How easy it was to compose such scenes, when they were safe at home at their table!

And so it went until the train pulled in at the Bradford station, sparks flying and iron screeching. The stink of hot metal pleached the choke of burning coal as they climbed out and followed the stream into the station to wait for the train to York. Anne led the way, clutching her case tightly against herself.

The station was crowded. Emily dropped behind Anne, as she often did, her head bent so that her bonnet obscured her face. How did Emily manage in Belgium, Anne wondered as she halted to permit the passage of a huge farmwife carrying two enormous baskets covered with checkered cloth. _But of course Charlotte managed everything, no doubt dictating every moment that the school’s directors did not._

No one could get past this woman; Anne sidestepped to follow in her wake, rather than attempt pushing past clumps of tired travelers and idle young men standing about with their hands plunged into their breeches pockets.

They reminded her of Branwell, a memory she shuttered quickly. “There is a place just freeing up,” she said over her shoulder, as a family rose in response to a conductor calling out another train.

But when the sisters reached the bench, it was to discover their Henry Angora in possession. Anne was going to turn away, when the young man smiled and picked up the parcel he’d set beside him. “Come along. There’s plenty of room, Miss.” He patted the scarred wooden bench.

Anne wanted to refuse, but already her case made her shoulders and arms ache. She glanced at Emily, to find her studying the toes of her boots. Anne thanked the young man stiffly, and sat, keeping her case on her lap, with her arms wrapped tightly around it.

Emily dropped next to her on the end of the bench, her back so bowed that her bonnet almost touched her travel case.

“I saw you two looking out from the Keighley train,” the young man said cheerfully. “Whither are you bound?”

It was a polite question, the tone idle, but Anne hated the situation. It was so easy for such things to go wrong, and you wouldn’t know it until you’d already erred. “We are to visit York Minster,” she said.

“York Minster, is it?” he returned. “Not much sport to be had there.”

Anne said nothing.

“Where have you set out from, Miss . . . ?”

“Keighley,” she said. Nothing would draw the word ‘Haworth’ from her.

“Miss Keighley?”

“We caught the train at Keighley.” Her lips wanted to form the word ‘sir’ out of habit, but this young man was probably younger than she, and anyway, she did not want to be talking to him. But she could not be rude.

So she looked away in hopes of another unoccupied space, but the crowd had only grown.

“And who is that there, so quiet and shy, Miss . . .?”

Again, Anne ignored the hint for her name. She would make no such present to a stranger, however handsome were his green eyes and his high brow and curling brown hair.

“She your maid?”

“She is my sister.”

“Oh! A shy miss, is she?”

Anne suppressed a sigh, resenting Emily’s ability to shut out the world—leaving Anne to deal with it. Except that was not fair. Emily was not completely divorced from the world. Her stiffened shoulders, her tension, her bowed back, all gave the signs that she endeavored to shut the world out, but every word the young man spoke darted past her invisible wall like knives.

Anne waited, stiff and uneasy as she watched the young man’s gaze travel from the crown of her worn bonnet to her threadbare gloves to her resoled boots. Once she would have found such a gaze impenetrable, but of necessity she had learnt the little signs—the contemptuous lifting of the upper lip, the lowered eyelids of increasing boredom and disappointment, the gradual turning outward of someone who no longer wishes to hold one in converse—and for once in her life she rejoiced in their plain gowns, and their unfashionable frizz poking out of their bonnets.

Then Emily glanced up, and Anne blinked, aghast, at the strange way her sister’s eyes widened, almost distended, like a frog squeezed by the cruel hands of the Ingham boy, who entertained himself with the hope that its eyes would pop out.

The young man’s jaw had dropped slightly. He rose, made a motion toward his hat—not quite a polite salute—and said, “Good day to you, Miss.” Then he walked away.

With every step he took, Anne’s unease transformed to the inward shiver of laughter. But she dared not let the least sign of it escape.

“It worked,” Emily breathed. “It worked. I mustered my courage, Anne, and did my very best to shoot fire from my eyes. Either _in veritas_ or _transferre_ , whichever succeeded, and it _did_.”

Not for all the world’s wealth would Anne observe that it had looked like she was about to, as Branwell said so aptly (and vulgarly) “cast up her accounts.” The young man probably thought Emily mad. _Then let us be mad together_.

o0o

 

Charlotte lowered the much-folded letter, then tore it across and across until it was a handful of tiny pieces of paper that she could slide into her pocket, and when unobserved, put into the stove.

Not that dear Papa wouldn’t find out the truth soon enough. But Charlotte would postpone cutting up his peace as long as possible. It was so very bad for his health, and already he was distressed at Anne’s having so unaccountably resigned her place at Thorp Green.

Unaccountably. Charlotte gripped the shredded paper so tightly that her fingernails dug into her palm. Anne had to have known something of Branwell’s disgrace. Some sign must have escaped the principals—some sigh, or languishing look, or maybe a tender word that was spoken when they thought themselves unobserved. Who would have thought baby Anne, of all people, would become so observant. But she was. Charlotte could claim to have the most worldly experience. She was certainly the most traveled, but Anne saw things.

And what was the use of that? Charlotte ran down to the kitchen. She chose her moment, and disposed of the horrid letter, clapping the iron lid shut, though she would have liked to watch it burn to cinders. She would _not_ clear the way for Branwell. He could explain himself when he arrived home.

But self-righteousness was not going to maintain the household when the two wage earners everyone had counted on were once again among them.

There was always the school, of course. Charlotte gripped her hands together, breathing against the surge of vile hatred, of anger, of resentment that seized her heart. There was no use in it. The facts were plain: they must earn a living. Branwell, Charlotte, and Anne could teach. Emily could not. Everyone agreed on that, Emily most of all, but she could hold household for a school.

But oh, taking in the children of strangers who would demand every penny’s worth—as was their right. Acting servile to the parents, then turning around to sit for hours with their snotty brats, droning through the tedium of lessons day after day . . . She loathed the idea so much that she could not bear to sit down to compile a list of clergymen with families.

Yet a literary career, which once had beckoned as her escape, was also out of reach, if Mr. Southey was to be believed. He had regarded her effusions as flightly—the sort of thing that maidens poured out. She recognized that now, having been a teacher who read the same sort of outpourings. She might argue with herself all night that her work was superior, that she contained the spark of genius, but all she had to do was to take out that letter and reread it to remind herself that he had looked upon her work with the same disdain with which she had regarded her students’ poetical work.

She walked upstairs, her head bowed so that the blurred stairs would not trip her, and entered the quiet room where usually her sisters sat. Branwell would soon be in his place over there. Her gaze turned toward the battered trunk where the soldiers were kept. Could she interest him again in Angria?

But there was no publishing _that_ , she knew now. It was too fantastical, too . . . She turned about the room as the afternoon rays slanted in, painting the worn carpet with light. She no longer saw the world through the eyes of maidenly effusion, that was certain. Her heart was no longer innocent. It had been sacrificed upon the altar of unrequited love—the blood dripped, smoking, to the floor.

And she could not shout it to the world. Her Grand Passion was in all ways but one as illicit as Branwell’s unfortunate connection. The world could mourn the doomed, soul-purifying love of Abilard and Heloise, but no one would exalt the love of a spinster for her married professor. The world—she had to face the truth—was far more likely to smirk.

However, illicit love _had_ been written about, and garnered world fame. It was just that sort of love that she and the others had read over and over from Lord Byron, until they had his poetry by heart.

 _It’s my being a female_ , Charlotte thought, whirling about. Perhaps she could recast that love in the form of a story, and publish it under a male cognomen. It shouldn’t be about kings and princes, demonic war commanders and revolutionaries . . . she had traveled enough to discover that she knew too little about such matters to make them convincing.

She sat down at the table, running her fingers along the ruts carved in the top—Branwell’s initials, and those of his favorite characters. Her fingers bumped into the inkwell, which Emily kept filled.

Charlotte frowned at it, for the first time aware of how frequent had been Emily’s refillings. What was Emily writing so assiduously? Were she and Anne still writing about their dolls?

Charlotte did not mean to be prying. It was curiosity—it was concern for the household—and tenderness for her sisters that led her to the shelf where Emily kept her things. There was the little writing case, and inside Charlotte discovered a cascade of tiny books and pieces of paper, written to the edges with minuscule script.

Charlotte plucked up a few of the top layer, placed a chair by the window to catch the last of the day’s light, and held them up to her face.

o0o

 

The afternoon sun streamed through the clerestory windows of York Minster, striking the vaultings opposite, so much like uplifted hands in prayer. White—gold—celestial blue.

Anne gazed up and up. Her heart expanded with exquisite anguish, causing her eyes to blur with tears. How she loved York Minster! She loved it so much she could not forbear to say anything, she prayed wordlessly that Emily might see it as she did—might then  understand, even share, her spiritual communion with God.

Here they were at last, walking into York Minster. The air was cool, scented of stone and the faintest trace of incense.

Emily’s breathing was audible as she squinted upward, turning slowly around.  One couldn’t even see the damage from the recent fires—one a few years ago, the other when Anne was little.

Anne whispered,

“ _But they that fix their hopes on high_  
Shall, in the blue-refulgent sky,  
  The sun's transcendent light,  
Behold a purer, deeper glow  
Than these uncertain gleams can show,  
  However fair or bright.  
O weak of heart! why thus deplore  
  That Truth will Fancy's dreams destroy?”

 

“Who wrote that?” Emily asked.

“Who?” Anne asked, bewildered.

“Let me guess. It is Juliet Augusteena.”  Emily tipped her head back. “And it is about her hopeless passion for Henry Angora. Oh, this is _perfect_ for the royal palace.” She bent her attention outward. “If  Ronald Magelcin were to . . .”

“It’s not Gondal,” Anne whispered, her eyes squeezed shut.

Emily’s breathing changed. Anne could not bear to look.

 “Anne?”

“It’s sacred.  This place is where my spirit and God’s grace can . . . almost meet.” Anne had to be truthful in this place.

Emily breathed again. When Anne’s eyes were closed, she was aware of Emily’s breathing. She sounded like a little pug; it was not quite a snore. But it wasn’t quiet breathing. Anne wondered if others heard her own breathing.

Emily said at last, “We will talk when we go outside.”

“We can talk now if you wish,” Anne said, sighing inwardly. She had hoped to conduct Emily over the entire church, telling its history, for it was nearly a thousand years old. How joyful that had made Anne on first hearing this fact, for it brought the awareness that these vaulted chambers full of light had resounded to prayers for nearly a thousand years. 

Everything about York Minster was miraculous, yet Emily saw it as a palace in Gondal. What else should Anne have expected? You do not change minds, hearts, or spirits at a glance. Except in stories.

Emily, pacing by her sister’s side, sensed Anne’s disappointment, which grieved her. “It is very beautiful,” she acknowledged as they walked out into the humid summer air, the glare of sunlight broken in puddles, and reflecting off glass.

They paused to get their bearings, then started down the street toward the place they’d been recommended to seek for lodging. “I am very glad we came.”

“Very glad we came,” Anne asked, “or very glad we came away?”

Anne knew that Emily loved the family with a ferocious loyalty, as all Emily’s emotions were fierce. But she had also grown up with Emily’s determination to keep Gondal from Charlotte, Branwell’s interests being perceived as far removed from the younger girls as the stars overhead.

“Is your observation aimed my way?” Emily asked, looking pained.

“No, no. It’s only . . . I miss the days when all four of us played with the Young Soldiers. The games were so much fun with us all.”

Emily’s right shoulder jerked up. “ _I_ did not proclaim our games babyish.”

“I think Charlotte might change her mind, if she were to hear some of our stories now. You agree with me, I know, how capital they have become.”

“They _are_ capital,” Emily agreed. “They are _perfect_ without anyone mucking about telling us what to do. Charlotte and Branwell have Angria, which they don’t show to _us_.”

Anne now understood, after her time as a governess, the lofty divide that two years’ age difference makes between siblings. Branwell and Charlotte had been at the other end of that divide when they began their games with the Young Soldiers.

But Emily had never seen that, even though she’d spent a little time as a teacher. She did not see the world the way Anne did—the way anyone did, Anne thought as they marched along.

Emily had already dismissed the subject of Charlotte. She wanted to get out of the sun, which boiled the top of her head through her bonnet. She glared at the brown puddles in the muddy street, and breathed through her mouth to avoid the stink of horse and dog and too many people: summer stenches.

Gondal did not stink. Nor did anyone have toothache. That was another reason why she preferred Gondal to this sorry, stupid world. But she knew she was avoiding the real truth, that she had disappointed Anne.

“I am not a Percy,” she burst out. “It’s just that God—and heaven—and death, is on that side of the divide. We’re on this side. I can’t see the other side any more than I can see birds flying overhead when others exclaim about their markings. But I know the birds are there, or why would people talk about them so much, write poems about them, paint pictures? Church for me is . . . is the same liturgy and seasonal prayers we have said all our lives, until my jaw claps without my mind having to recollect the words. All I hear is the squeak of the stonemason’s shoes, and how Mrs. Donagh’s corset creaks. I hear the children whispering, and the whispered scoldings of the adults. I hear everyone paying attention to anything else but what is being said at the pulpit. I _know_ my duty, but I don’t _feel_ it.”

Anne squeezed her hand again.

“I like to feel,” Emily said. “I _must_ feel. Sometimes—you know—I could burst out of my skin, trying to contain the sensations. But if I can write them, I won’t burst.” Emily halted. “It is what I envisioned for the spirit of Zalona. Rodric Lesley tried to conquer it for himself, but its spirit was greater than he could conceive.”

Anne understood that as a concession. She said nothing more as they made their way to the lodging, which was crowded with women young and old. Anne fell into her Roe Head manners, and Emily withdrew, head down, unspeaking.

After a dull meal served on heavy clay dishes, very long prayers before and after, and the disjointed sort of conversation that one endures among strangers who all wish to be perceived as civilized—perhaps a little better than they really are—at last the two could retire. It took another age to get into their nightclothes, and to obtain hot water in the pitcher, for everywhere one turned there were queues.

When the clock in the stairwell below chimed ten, a matron mounted the steps with heavy tread, a massive white ghost in her starched nightgown and cap. She turned a stern gaze along the two rows of beds, then motions for all to kneel. Then she led them in a very long prayer whose words were not shaped like any prayer Anne made, though it was Anglican in form.

She tried to will her spirit to join, but it was a struggle: her mind would flit away into other thoughts. Did Romish girls kneel down to pray in the same way? Charlotte had uttered disparaging things about Roman Catholic idolatry, but she wouldn’t describe the French version for Anne.

She tried to picture a row of kneeling girls praying in French. How did God hear them, did he speak French? All languages? Or did prayers transform into pure thought? In that case . . . no. She knew _that_ struggle, she would not fight it again. And she knew her duty: she must offer God a pure heart, whatever words the mind said.

Kneeling next to her, Emily sighed, a little catch in her breath, as if she pressed back a cough.

At last it was done, and Anne tried to feel the cleansing of her soul for sleep as she climbed into the bed with Emily. Someone put out the candles, plunging the room into the blue of a fading summer’s night. There were others in the room, so they couldn’t talk.

Not that the sisters wanted to. Emily was very tired. She never liked the idea of leaving home, though this journey was different, for it was with Anne, with whom they could play Gondal to their hearts content, and not Charlotte, who would direct conversation as she thought best. And indeed, there had been much story talk. It was almost as good as living in Gondal . . . York Minster had already transformed itself into the enemy’s personal palace . . .

As Emily’s breathing slowed to a rumble like a cat’s purr, Anne stared at the unsteady reflection of a lantern moving jerkily on the opposite wall, thrown from a walker somewhere below the window. The somnolent air was filled with little noises: someone restlessly turning over, the light giggle of a pair of girls at the opposite end of the dormitory room, sharply shushed. A mutter. A cough.

She suspected Emily had claimed York Minster for Gondal in some manner. Anne knew she would be expected to share the story on the morrow. _I can pretend, too. In my mind, this new palace will_ not _be York Minster._ _It will be something else—something fantastical, made of marble. With statues from the classics, perhaps, instead of the apostles and saints_. _And that will be my own secret._

That was the strength of pretence—you could change things. Though it wasn’t entirely pretence with Emily, Anne suspected. That is, she seemed to pull Gondal over the real world, in preference to what she saw around her.

How could Anne blame her? She was not alone in her effort to pull a pretend world over the real one. The Inghams, in their beautiful house, with all their wealth, had done their best to create for everyone else a story of civilization and refinement _. And I couldn’t make their story real by transforming their little demons over into civilized children . . ._

There was something important there. Something about how one sees and what one sees, how the individual perceives the world, and how society does. And then there is Emily, who shuts society out firmly, in preference to the society of Gondal. Emily . . . the young man who wasn’t Henry . . . married people, and the pretence of wedded bliss . . . was the grand passion all a pretence, then?

Anne drifted into sleep while thinking about her mother. Everyone said she had been a dutiful wife, but Anne wondered if she had been a happy one, before the horrid illness took her.

o0o

 

Charlotte’s nose was almost touching the page, her eyes continually blurring, and finally streaming before she had to straighten her aching neck. She discovered that the long twilight had gradually faded from gold to blue.

She set Emily’s poetry on the table.  She could argue provincialisms—trite expressions—hints of sensations considered improper when expressed by a female, especially one unmarried, but the truth was, many of Emily’s poems reminded her of Branwell. As if they had been written by a man.

Mr. Southey would not attribute flightiness to _these_. He might not even scold the author into the proper disposition of her time with thoughts of marriage and family, for he might not assume the author was a ‘she.’

Charlotte replaced the poems where she had found them, and took a turn about the room. Imagination was a presence in these poems, spirited and untamed. How long had this been going on? No, more to the point: when had Emily left off writing silly stories about dolls, to take up with these mysterious moors and lakes, moonlight and thunderstorms, untrammeled nature raising sensations of wild abandon and forbidden love?

 _Cold in the earth, and fifteen wild Decembers_  
From those brown hills have melted into spring--  
Faithful indeed is the spirit that remembers  
After such years of change and suffering!

 _Sweet Love of youth, forgive if I forget thee_  
While the World's tide is bearing me along:  
Sterner desires and darker hopes beset me,  
Hopes which obscure but cannot do thee wrong.

The hitherto strong conviction that genius was reserved solely to Charlotte warred with the instinctive conviction that there was something arresting in her sister’s work. Charlotte paced the room, struggling mentally until she arrived at the happy inspiration: she, who recognized talent, could guide as well as any distant poet laureate. Why should she not attempt wider publication of _two_ writers? Surely that doubled the chance of earning enough to keep the household running without the degradation of sending out supplicatory letters to people, promising to educate their abominable urchins for a pittance?

 

o0o

 

Anne woke up to a jumbled dream about her mother—jumbled because Mama looked like Charlotte, and the dream somehow took place before her marriage. Anne opened her eyes, still hearing the words she was composing consequent to her mother’s hand having been requested in matrimony. _My affections not only ought to be founded on approbation, but they will and must be so_ . . .

What did Mrs. Robinson believe before she married? Anne wondered as she joined the line in getting wash water. Her mind instantly shied away from Mrs. Robinson. But the larger question remained, this one of grand and deathless passion. Did passion alter? Did some marry with uncertain passion—or none at all?

Charlotte despised the works of Miss Austen as stilted and old-fashioned, but Anne had pored over them repeatedly, especially _Pride and Prejudice_ and _Sense and Sensibility_ , with their many marriages. Charlotte Lucas had said that passion had no place in marriage, not for someone like her. Someone like her sisters, Anne thought, watching Emily as she sat on the edge of the bed, impatiently fingering her hair up and skewering it impatiently into place.

Once they were safely out of earshot, and walking toward the train station, she said, “We shall recommence the game, just as we planned. But until then, I would like to talk about the writing itself.”

Emily gave her a surprised look. “How?”

“It is this question of realism. I wonder if it can be more effective than all the grand passions and mighty wars.” She paused to catch her breath. If only the still summer air did not cause the smoke to hang in a pall. It caught behind her ribs, making it difficult to breathe.

“Effective?” Emily repeated.

“To write realistically—not verisimilitude so much as the truth of human desires.” Anne paused, remembering the cautionary words of Mr. Beattie, who had said that the need for fiction’s disguises reflected the moral insufficiency of human beings. But if one kept in mind—

“Why should I want to read anything just like life?” Emily burst out, standing for a moment in the middle of the street. “If _Blackwoods_ were to print a story about two sisters sitting in a train compartment, comparing their pangs of hunger, and how dreadful the smoke is, and how will they wash the grit from their collars, I should not read it. However, if the sisters were secretly pursued by a demon, a ghoul, or a vampire, _that_ , I would read.”

“Hi, there, make way!” A cab bore down on them, horses tossing their heads.

Anne clutched Emily’s arm, and both scurried to the curb, their traveling cases bumping their ribs unmercifully. Anne gritted her teeth, hoping that the puddle she could not avoid stepping in had run clean enough to only wet her hem, and not cover it with filth.

Emily was quiet until they reached an empty train compartment, then she said, fiercely,  “I do not care at all for society’s strictures any more than I care for the realism of flies and rashes, sick babies, and manufacturies. We are born with spirits larger than those things—larger than worlds—and that’s where my heart dwells, every day. Don’t lets give it up, Anne, like Charlotte did.”

Anne had been wrestling with an idea still inchoate, about how truth could be dressed in desire—that was Dr. Johnson—but also, truth as society accepted it bumped up against personal truth, like Emily’s. Only the ideas would not come, and she did not want to think about what she had learnt of Charlotte’s passion.

So she said, “Did Henry Angora catch up with Cordelia, then?”

Emily’s whole countenance brightened. “I worked it out last night, while that matron _would_ go on lecturing God about how He should settle the savages overseas. Henry captured Cordelia at the train station—his chariot raced ahead of the train. He forced her back to his personal palace, all white and gold, with vaulted chambers, and vitrine art in blue. He said she must marry him, and thus combine the republic with the kingdom, or face death.”

“Does she accept?” Anne asked, trying to recollect if Cordelia hated or loved Henry.

“She refuses, though love burns in her heart. But principle is stronger, and so he orders up a firing squad right then and there. She is very beautiful, tied to a stake in a dress of pure white, her hair unbound, her head held high. The crowd shouts and mourns, women loosing their hair and tearing it.”

“Shall she die, then?”

“Of course not! What is the use in that? She will be rescued at the very moment the captain raises his sword to cry _Fire_ , and it is Prince Julian himself.” Emily tipped her head back, her lips pressed firmly, then they relaxed in a smile. “And he fights a duel with Henry, as the crowd looks on, unable to breathe for terror.”

“The firing squad does nothing to stop this duel?”

“It would be dishonorable. There is a strict rule in the dueling code. So Cordelia escapes over the saddlebow of Prince Julian’s horse, but she is looking back over her shoulder as Henry stands there in the middle of the flames of his palace—for fighting broke out—and he is making a vow. She can see his lips move, and his eyes blaze with unholy passion, but she cannot hear the words . . .” Emily blinked, and leaned forward. “So you can be Cordelia this time, and I am Julian. They are running from the kingdom, an army in pursuit, and Julian is begging Cordelia to marry him—I will be Julian, lovelorn yet honorable. What does Cordelia say?”

o0o

Charlotte knew well how angry Emily would be over what she would perceive as a breach of privacy, of trust. Emily had no notion of literature—she did not want Charlotte’s breadth of vision, hard-won as it was—but she could be stubborn. Charlotte spent the entire day, as her hands performed the interminable household labors, into fashioning words that might the quicker waken her sister to her ideas.

And so she waited until the travelers had walked the long way home, tired and dusty, their hands raw from gripping their cases. She had seen to it that they had fresh bread-and-butter waiting, tea, and strawberries that she had picked herself.

And when they retired to the room upstairs, she waited with her book while Emily scribbled with bent head over a paper, then at last rose to bury it in her writing case.

When she opened it, she stilled, then her head darted downward as her fingers sifted the little papers. Then she looked up. “Anne? Did you mix the Angora papers with the Navarre?”

Before quiet Anne could speak, Charlotte stated with all the authority she could muster, “It was I.”

Emily’s scowl was every bit as terrible as Charlotte had foreseen. And so she abandoned the carefully chosen words about a talent to be nurtured—how to choose good poetry over bad—those observations could wait.  She said, “Branwell is soon to rejoin us. It does not matter why.” She observed Anne’s head hanging, and no hint of the surprise that Emily briefly expressed. “Emily. How would you like to free this family from poverty once and for all? Papa’s health is my first concern, but second is ours. I think, with your poetry joined to mine, it could happen. And if we are successful, our reward shall be the escape from the toil of schoolmistresses.”

Emily’s scowl deepened.

To Charlotte’s surprise, Anne uttered some words in a small voice:

“ _Time steals thy moments, drinks thy breath,_  
  Changes and wastes thy mortal frame;  
But though he gives the clay to death,  
  He cannot touch the inward flame.”

 

And when Charlotte's countenance betrayed not only surprise but a cautious approval, Anne dared to say, “I believe I have something to show you.”


End file.
